Omar ibn Said’s Rhetorical Discourse Against Slavery

Ibn Said’s description of the servile spaces he encountered, his Africa captivity and his attempt to escape, provoke several dichotomies such as manumission, freedom and bondage, power and knowledge, and life and death. In fact both parts of the Memoir—the prologue and the epilogue—coexist and work together to extend the meaning of these dichotomies, and they go a long way toward explaining Ibn Said’s intellectual poise. The rhetorical gesture of using the Qur’an is a further indication of his knowledge of exegesis of al-Mulk (chapter 67), which may attest to his protest against slavery, adding yet another piece of damming evidence against the servile estate in antebellum America.